Transcripts of Deaf Senior University Lecturer
We usually ask you to start by telling us just a little bit of background about yourself. Important things about growing up, about your schooling. I guess you could think of this as if you meet new people, and you want to tell them the most important things about you in a couple of minutes. What would those things be?
Let me think. Alright I was born in New York, in Long Island. And I'm from a rather large family, went to a public school for my entire education. And that life experience of being the only deaf person, in family and at the school, had a big impact on me. Because I didn't really socialize with other deaf people until I was about 15. And that was really critical, that was the first critical thing that happened. The second critical thing that happened was that my father died and that had a really a pretty good impact on my life. And then other family members have also passed away. So anyways those were the two really big incidents that I remember. They... When I look at who I am today, a deaf professional, those are the two incidents, meeting deaf people at the age of 15, and the loss of my father, that really seem to have the greatest impact. So if I were to meet somebody that I didn't know and wanted to let them know who I am, I think those are the two things that I'd really talk about. Because they affected my relationships with people in general, and my understanding of how to interact with people. My life as a deaf person, how to navigate the experiences, through school, through work, and through my family, those were all impacted by those two occurrences.
Good, thank you. I imagine that they'll probably come up a little later in the interview again too. Kind of the whole subject of this interview, of this project, is about literacy. It is about having you tell some stories about early literacy and even late literacy practices, the kind of things that were important to you. Learning to read and write, in English. But also obviously we're also interested in Sign Language literacy, in your acquisition of Sign Language as a form of literacy as well. And then the special part of this project is adding in the function of technology, in connection with those interviews. So let's start with early literacy, and what are some of your earliest memories of reading and writing in English? Do you have an early memory that you remember first reading, or a good story you can tell us about you as an early reader?
Because both of my parents are native English speakers, they knew some other languages as well, like Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew. So my family was multi-lingual, but because of their use of all of those languages, they really influenced me by.... When they found out that I was deaf they weren't entirely certain what to do. And of course they were thinking "Spoken language is associated with hearing, so what should we do with this deaf child?" And my mother, as soon as they discovered that I was deaf, began making English notecards with labels of everything in the house, so that it was visually accessible to me. For example there would be a chair and she'd have a card attached to it that had C-H-A-I-R on it, the same with the table, everything that was concrete. And that was how I began to pick up vocabulary. In terms of sentence structures and so forth that came much, much later, and through building of the language. I also remember that when I was in school, because I was at a public school, my access to communication and the language was really heavily dependent on two things Lip reading which I'm pretty good at. And looking back I think "Wow, I had to have those kinds of skills" And I remember there were some other deaf children that I had sort of become friends with, and met with periodically. And all of us seemed to have that skill. So I was pretty fortunate that that helped me to survive.
It wasn't always successful of course but it did help me to survive and to get by in school. So that helped me a lot and the other thing that really seemed to help me was that I was the oldest of 3 children. So I had a younger sister who is 19 months younger than me, which meant that we were pretty close in age, and there was not a big gap, for her, she was learning things and then the things that she learned in new, I kind of learned from her, even though I was a little bit behind her by 19 months. She helped me to keep developing more or less appropriately. And because my family, my aunts and uncles and cousins and so forth, it's quite a large family. They helped me learn how to socialize with people, because we were a very, very close family. And so I learned through those kinds of interactions with my family, how to get along with people who could hear. Then at school as I said I went to a public school the entire time. I did have some support services, but at the time that meant no interpreters... Gosh, how do I say this, other kinds of support services like with loops, the FM loop systems, that kind of technology didn't exist. But there was a teacher from the special ed. program who would come to my school and meet with me on a daily basis. And those meetings depended on what I was needing help with at the time. Any particular issues with the classroom or with the teacher or whatever.
And so that helped me to learn to read and write. But, now that there's technology, I think the first technology that really helped me, was the use of the typewriter. That really helped me to learn how to write sentences. It forced me to really think about how I was writing things. Writing by hand a little bit did that, but mostly it was the typewriter because I had to pay attention to the words and the letters and the way I put them in order. And then that transitioned to skills that I use on the TTY. Which again really helped me because it forced me to interact with other deaf people, and their language, their English skills, some of them had really quite good English skills, better than mine, at the time. And so I learned from those kind of interactions as well how to structure things. And then with the advent of closed captioning, you remember those old decoders that we used to have, the little brown box? That also was very helpful. I remember my very first time that I saw how people talked. Now, you know that closed captioning is not perfect, right. But, gosh it was so much better than the way that I was communicating with hearing people, trying to read their lips and catch words here and there and put them together and figure it out. But gosh, here I could see it all, I could see the whole sentence. And then the interactions, and how the facial expressions worked with the interactions.
So even though I was a little bit behind, sure, I was close enough to be able to understand what was happening, and I really think that is where I began to really get the English language. So I remember looking back a word here and a word there that I understood. But until the advent of closed captioning, that's when everything started to make sense to me. I felt like I spent a lot of time during my teen years really becoming like a sponge, right? That typically happens when you have an infant, they're like sponges and they get everything. But mine didn't happen, that didn't happen for me until I was a teenager. And then things really took off and I got it. So I could go on and on, but...
No, that gives us a lot to go on. Because those three technologies already you've added in, from the typewriter and the TTY and the closed captioning. Because kind of what you said, you started out by learning vocabulary, word by word by word. The things around the house. And I was wondering that, when it went from vocabulary, to a kind of sentence or communication interaction. Do you remember about how old you were with each of those items, like how old you were, it's fine if you don't remember the exact age, but around when you first used a typewriter. And captioning I think is important, Can you remember watching, when did you first watch captioning?
I would guess, because you know it's not entirely clear. But I do know that the typewriter, that was always in the house when I was growing up. So I'm thinking... I was born in the 60s, so I would guess that my parents had always had that typewriter as long as I was around. The TTY was in the 80s, and captioning was what? Early 80s? So, you know, I was a teenager, really, I was probably a teenager. And so all that happened fairly late for me. Things began to fit together. You also talked about the influence of certain family members. Yes, I mean there was a lot of calculating and figuring out that I had to do, based on what I remembered from all those previous years, and then when it started, it was crazy, it just all started to make sense, and it was a lot of self-analysis I think. You also articulated the importance of certain family members right? So your mother in labeling all the things around the house, trying to give you access to English words, concepts in general. And then also the story with your sister was an important part, right? Of your early literacy? Yes, she, you know obviously she was a peer. And she really influenced me because she could hear, and she was the most visual child, I'm sorry, the most verbal child of the family. She just talked and talked and talked and talked. Maybe that's because she was a middle child, I don't know but she was very, very verbal. And so I think, her speech, that she talked so much, was one of the things that I paid attention to. Because she was always talking. And so then I took that opportunity to learn from her.
And I have lots of cousins who are about the same age as well. There's probably, what, 17 cousins? First cousins, 17 first cousins. And we got together fairly frequently, like probably every weekend. As I said the family is a very close family. And that exposure, with cousins of the similar age group also helped a great deal. So not just my sister but my cousins as well. Alright, so those two people. What I'm going to ask you to think about, see if you can, do you have a story, that might incorporate a certain event or a certain artifact? A thing that you, a book that you read, a something that you wrote. You know many times people have a kind of an event that sticks in their mind. A moment in school or a moment at home that helps them kind of characterize, who they are as a literate person. I think for example your telling of the story of accessing captioning, and understanding that is one of those. But I'm looking for even a specific kind of story. Do you have good story to tell us? Well I don't know, it might be a good one (chuckling), it's a little strange, I don't know. But it was something that really made an impact. You know part of the Jewish tradition, as when the child reaches the age of becoming an adult, which is called the Bat-Mitzvah. For the girls it's called the Bat-Mitzvah. So, you know, in the Jewish tradition... I'm sorry, my family did not sign in the house, they had very strong oral traditions, so there was lots of speaking, and with my parents expectation of my having a Bat-Mitzvah, and this is very special to them because I was the first child too. So they were thinking "What do I do with this deaf child? Because she's supposed to learn Hebrew, and..." So my parents sent me to Hebrew school. And of course, you know, they're all speaking Hebrew. And I'm not understanding anything that's happening in this school.
So that required me really to read the Bible, the different Bible stories, with a Hebrew text beside it so that I could make the translation. So I was learning the Hebrew language through that means. Then for the Bat Mitzvah, I had to prepare and study the Torah. So that I would be able to speak on the day of the Bat-Mitzvah, the Torah. Now, I wasn't learning well during class, so I went to a Cantor, not the Rabbi, that's an important distinction that we're making. The Rabbi leads the temple and teaches the classes and so forth. But they assigned the Cantor to work with me because I wasn't learning in class. And the Cantor's were always to sing right, which is rather ironic. This story is a little funny that way. So anyhow I'm studying with the Cantor, every day, every week we got together, and I learned how to speak the Hebrew language. And the Cantor taught me through audio-tapes. I was supposed to listen, right, how is that supposed to work with a deaf person, right? But to this day I look back and I think, oh, well, I didn't know any better. So I was 11, 12 years old, whatever. And I thought Ok, whatever, so I went with the flow. But to compensate then, even though you know, I was doing it with the audio tapes and all of that. To compensate, my survival strategy was to force myself to do all this reading. Reading in the Hebrew language and studying. And I did a lot of analyzing. So again I'm being sort of self taught, even though I had this one-on-one tutor with the Cantor, who was supposed to be teaching me how to pronounce these words. But essentially for me to be well prepared for my Bat-Mitzvah, I had to learn it all on my own. And so that's one of the situations that I remember, very distinctly. And from that point on, you know, I have a masters in Jewish education, and I think it's because that experience was so profound, that I had to go every Friday night and every Saturday to learn this.
So it motivated me to get the Masters in Jewish education. Which is a good thing, even though this was all based on being able to hear these audio tapes and sing, which I couldn't do. (Laughing). Fabulous story. And so that one is really about reading and learning to speak. Do you also have any story, something that you remember about yourself writing? An early artifact or event associated with writing? Yes, that was also part of the studies for the Bat Mitzvah, so that I would be able to learn how to write Hebrew as well. And so the prophet that was assigned to me, at that time, said that I had to write a story, about this prophet. And so that required me to be creative and produce a... There's a lot related to that, so gosh that particular experience taught me a whole lot of skills all at the same time. You know it's interesting because my parents are very strongly culture and language oriented. They enjoy traveling a great deal, and so my family really exposed me, in particular me, because I'm the oldest of the three children. And that was of course before my father passed away. He passed away in his mid-40s. So there was this short period of time in my life, when there was a lot of language and culture and writing. all being provided to me. A lot of exposure and I would guess that that started from about the age of 5 to gosh, my teenage years. We did a lot of traveling. We lived in France for a short time, in Israel. We traveled to Spain, went to Italy. So you know I had a lot of experiences in Europe at that time. So that also had a pretty good impact on my ability to read signs. You know we've always read the signs while we were traveling, and we talked about maps as we traveled and so I was exposed to a lot of things. And exposed in a visual fashion. Right, and what you're saying, exposed to the idea of learning any language, and culture. So, then obviously one of the big questions is, when does Sign Language, and deaf culture, enter into this scene, for you? What about literacy learning there?